Alex
Sixteen
The house is quiet, as it should be in the middle of the night. The heating system hums within the walls. Outside, the wind presses against the windows and then fades.
I surface slowly from sleep before I understand why. The monitor on the nightstand carries a small sound at first. A rustle. Then a soft whimper that sharpens into a cry.
Eloise cries again.
I swing my legs out of bed and walk down the hall, the floor cool under my feet. Her door is cracked open, the soft glow of the nightlight spilling into the hallway.
She’s sitting upright when I push the door wide.
Her hair sticks out in uneven directions from sleep, and one hand grips the edge of her blanket.
“Hey,” I say quietly.
Her face crumples with relief when she sees me. “I had a bad dream.”
I cross the room and sit on the edge of the bed. “About what?”
She shakes her head. Likely the dream is already slipping away but the feeling hasn’t followed yet. “Monsters,” she says finally.
“Those again.”
She nods, solemn.
I reach for the water cup on her bedside table and hand it to her. She drinks a little, and then pushes it back toward me and burrows into the pillow.
Her Hello Kitty has fallen half off the bed. I set it back beside her shoulder.
“You’re safe,” I tell her. “Just a dream.”
She nods again but her fingers hook into the sleeve of my T-shirt.
“Stay.”
I lean back against the headboard and pull the blanket up around both of us.
“Okay.”
Her breathing starts to slow almost immediately. The panic that woke her fades in the quiet, replaced by the heavy rhythm of sleep.
A few minutes pass.
When I return to my room, I pick up my phone to check the time.
A weather alert appears on the screen, and I read the notification once the phone unlocks. Frost warning across the valley. Temperatures dropping faster than forecast in several communities.
I glance out the window, even though the vineyards aren’t visible from here.
Cold nights this time of year don’t mean much in town, but for Josie that’s entirely different.
Her voice comes back to me, as does her quiet concentration as she stepped out of the car, already scanning the vines.
“Spring frost can wipe out new growth in a few hours,” she’d said, her tone abruptly different from the casual conversation we’d been having only minutes earlier.
I open the weather app and check the current temperature. It’s lower than it was earlier in the evening and evidently dropping. Vineyards will already be moving—wind machines starting, heaters pulled into the rows, everyone who works those fields are out of bed whether they want to be or not.
I head downstairs to grab my jeans from the kitchen chair where I dropped them earlier and lace my boots slowly so the sound doesn’t carry up the stairs. My jacket hangs on the back of the chair beside them.
I watch the numbers on the screen update for another moment. I walk by Eloise’s room and check on her.
Her eyes open halfway as I stand there. “Daddy?”
“I’m right here,” I say softly.
She watches me through the haze of sleep. “Where are you going?”
I enter to smooth her hair back from her forehead. “Just out for a little while.”
Her fingers find the kitty again and hold it against her chest. “Will you come back?”
“Before morning,” I tell her. “And Zara is here with you.”
Her eyes close again before I finish the sentence. She won’t wake again until morning.
I ease her door almost closed and step back into the hallway.
Downstairs the kitchen is dim except for the narrow strip of light under the cabinets.
Zara leaves it on most nights so the house never goes completely dark.
The glow falls across the counter and the tile floor, just enough to see without turning on the overheads.
I walk down to Zara’s basement suite and knock lightly on her bedroom door. There’s a pause before it opens a few inches, her hair loose over one shoulder, sleep thick in her voice. “Are you headed to the hospital?” she asks.
“Frost warning.”
Her brow furrows. “At the vineyard?”
“All over the valley.”
She opens the door a little farther and leans against the frame.
“It dropped fast tonight,” I say.
Zara glances toward the window. “Are you going out to Black Bear?”
I haven’t told Zara much about Josie, but she knows I took Eloise to meet her, and that was a big step for me.
“Josie will be working,” I say. “They all will. I might be able to help.”
She looks confused for a moment and then nods. “Okay.”
I hand her the monitor for Eloise’s room.
“Go,” she adds. “Drive carefully.”
“Thanks.” I take the stairs two at a time, pick up my keys on the kitchen counter, and step into the cold.
The Volvo’s engine turns over on the first try. I let it idle a moment while the heater wakes up, the dashboard clock glowing softly in the dark.
2:17 a.m.
The streets are empty as I pull away from the house. A few porch lights burn in the night, but most of town is asleep, the houses sitting behind dark trees and quiet yards.
Once I leave the neighborhood and cross the bridge, the road opens into the farmland that surrounds the hills along the lake. I see headlights moving across multiple blocks. Vineyards are already in motion.
A mile down the road, another realization hits. I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do when I get there.
I’m an oncologist. My work happens in quiet exam rooms and hospital corridors under fluorescent lights, not in vineyards in the middle of the night.
I can explain treatment protocols and read scans.
I can sit with families while they absorb news they didn’t expect to hear.
None of that prepares me to handle frost in a vineyard.
But Josie will know what to do. Her staff will know what to do. The people who work those vines every day will already be moving through the rows, checking temperatures and starting whatever systems they rely on when the weather turns.
What they won’t have is more time. Surely there’s something they can instruct me to do. I can offer another pair of hands.
I pass another field, the frost thicker where the land dips toward the irrigation ditch. The headlights catch it in a pale shimmer before the darkness closes in again behind me.
The winery road appears a few minutes later, a narrow lane that cuts between two long blocks of vines. I slow and turn onto the gravel. I’m already here.
Engines run somewhere deeper in the property, the steady mechanical thrum carrying through the chilly air. People move between the vines.
Even from my car, I can see the pace of it. Jackets pulled tight, boots crunching over hard ground, someone dragging a hose across the row while another checks a thermometer hanging from a post.
Work lights burn across the vineyard as I reach the property. Not the soft lighting the winery uses during evening tastings, but bright portable lamps mounted on trucks and tractors.
I pull to the edge of the service road and shut off the engine. For a moment I sit there watching the movement across the vineyard, scanning for Josie. Frost has already settled along the lower leaves, a pale shimmer under the lights, and the air smells faintly of fuel and cold metal.
I will myself into motion, and the car door shuts behind me. A few people glance up as I step onto the gravel before returning immediately to what they were doing.
I spot Josie halfway down the nearest row.
She’s wearing a heavy jacket over jeans and work boots, her hair pulled back and tucked under a knit cap. She kneels beside one of the heaters, turning the valve before stepping back to check the flame.
She stands just as I reach the end of the row. The surprise on her face is immediate. “Alex?”
I stop a few feet away. “You said frost nights matter.”
She looks blankly at me while the noise of the vineyard continues around us. “What are you doing here?”
“I saw the alert,” I explain. “The temperature dropped.”
Her eyes flick to the rows behind me before returning to my face. “You drove out here because of that?”
“I thought you might need some help.”
She looks me over for another moment.
“I should warn you,” I add. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
That earns the first hint of a smile. “Good,” she says. “You’ll fit right in.” She turns toward the truck parked at the end of the row and gestures for me to follow.
The bed is stacked with metal heaters.
“Carry these down the row,” she says, lifting one and placing it in my hands. “Every third vine.”
The heater is heavier than it looks. I adjust my grip. “Every third vine,” I repeat.
“If you lose count, start again.”
I step into the row and start walking.
The ground is harder than I expected. By the time I reach the third vine, my fingers have gone stiff from the cold. Setting the heater down takes more effort than I want to admit.
Behind me Josie moves down the row, checking placements, adjusting valves, lighting flames that flicker briefly before settling into steady heat.
When she reaches me again I’m crouched beside the second heater, trying to twist the valve open with stiff fingers.
“You’re fighting it,” she says.
“I noticed.”
She steps closer and takes the valve from my hand, turning it easily. “Left first,” she says. “Then the ignition.”
I follow the motion she shows me. The flame catches a second later. “Left first,” I repeat.
Josie straightens, her breath visible in the cold air. “You didn’t have to come out here.”
I stand and brush the frost from my hands. “I wanted to help, if I could. You said frost nights matter.”
“They do.”
“Then it seemed like a bad night to stay in bed.”
She watches me for another second before turning back toward the truck. “Row five needs more heaters,” she says over her shoulder.
I pick up the next one and head that direction.
The work lights throw long white bands across the vineyard, leaving the spaces between the rows in shadow. The cold has fully taken hold, seeping through denim and gloves and settling into the joints of my hands.
Somewhere farther down the block, an engine roars to life. The wind machine catches slowly at first, the blades turning with a heavy mechanical thump before the speed builds and the air begins to move.
Josie lifts another heater from the back of the truck and hands it to me.
I glance down the line of vines disappearing into the dark. “I’m trusting that you won’t fire me if I miscount.”
She shakes her head before turning back toward the truck. “You’re not on payroll.”
“Good,” I say, shifting the heater against my hip. “I’d hate to start my agricultural career with a disciplinary note.”
She smiles, and suddenly I realize she’s the most beautiful woman in the world.
The work is simple but physical. Carry. Place. Turn the valve. Strike the ignition. By the time I reach the far end of the row, my fingers are mostly numb inside my gloves, and my shoulders are sensing the repetition.
But overall, the vineyard moves with quiet efficiency. Trucks creep along the service lanes. Someone drags another hose across the gravel. The wind machine sends a steady rush of air over the tops of the vines.
Someone at the far edge of the block calls out a new number, and the sound carries through the rows.
Josie walks to the thermometer hanging from a wooden post and checks it herself. When she exhales, the breath leaves her in a slow cloud.
I step up beside her.
“That bad?”
“It’s too late for this kind of cold,” she says. “If it drops another degree the heaters won’t be effective and we’ll lose the new growth.”
I look across the vineyard, the lights stretching out into the dark. “Tell me what to do.”
“You’ve already done enough.”
“I’m an oncologist,” I tell her. “Standing around pretending I understand plants isn’t a good use of my skill set.”
Despite everything, she smiles. “Row five,” she says. “We need three more heaters.”
I nod and start walking. When I glance back, Josie is watching the row where I disappeared, her arms folded against the cold. After a moment she turns back to the vines and the work waiting for her.